SIXTH SENSE

We are sorry for not updating you all with some of the current changes that has been going around. We are finally again back to business telling you all about a product that has been doing the rounds-Sixth Sense.

How does one perceive and see things around? To begin with, it is a silly question. We have our five sense organs for it, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a sixth sense too? Today seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling are not the only information required to decide the credibility of an object. Why else would ‘Google’ be so popular! But you cannot always ‘log on’ when you need information and knowledge about the object in front of you. That’s where Sixth Sense comes in.

Sixth Sense- it connects the digital world to the physical one. The device (which can be worn around the neck) consist a projector, a mirror, a camera connected to the cell-phone and colored caps (like rings) which are put on the tips of thumb and the forefinger. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction. It is just like watching search results only without a required screen!

The Sixth Sense device caters to a variety of needs, like map navigation. The fingers would allow zooming in an out of the map layout and help search the exact location. If you buy some stuff, it will pop up all the information available about it, so you get the best deal. The drawing tool helps draw on any surface using the fingers. It recognizes free hand gestures too. Using hands ‘framing’ gestures, will click pictures and then later you can flip through those pictures. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing and ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.

The mind behind this intriguing device is Pranav Mistry, an Indian Student pursuing PhD in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s media lab. His work in detail can be viewed at www.pranavmistry.com

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About us

Free time tends to maximize your thinking abilities and leads you to something that may sometimes be very exciting. GeekOnNet.com has been such an experience for us. It’s an online portal where we write mainly about new online inventions, business events, innovative websites and web solutions.

We had a group known as the ‘Open Source’ during my IIT days, a group of students who used to share all the new ideas and solutions to solving assignments. Most of us were into blogging and used to put in our ideas into our own individual blogs. We used to meet up every time there was a barrage of assignments. Once during such a week, there came up an idea of having our own website and putting in all our technical discussions and analysis into that.

Me and two of my classmates Ranjeet Kumar Vimal and Deepak Mishra took of the initiative. Ranjeet posted the first article on June 9, 2008. He wrote about a 17 year girl earning $70K from internet. The response he got from the readers was very good. With time me and Deepak also joined in. We also bought the domain name “GeekOnNet.com” from US.

Our articles ranged from analysis and comparisons of online webportals to writing about budding entrepreneurs. We focused mainly on the online startups and portals. Also me and Ranjeet being from Computer Science department helped us, we could give a common man analysis of social networking websites- Orkut, Myspace, Facebook. When Crome and Bing was launched, people were looking out for comparisons and ours was the first to give a comprehensive analysis of both of them. The article on Mozilla and Internet Explorer received the maximum number of hits our portal ever received. Deepak had a different kind of a contribution to make. He comes from the Mechanical Engineering Department and belongs to a Theatre group in Mumbai. He had very good networking skills and had lots of contacts of Ex-IITians who were into entrepreneurship. We added a different section to our portal- the place where we wrote about the startups. GeekOnNet.com had finally become a startup for startups.

Some of our achievements:-

1. 4th most popular blogging website of Mumbai by the bloggers community of Mumbai (http://www.mumbaibloggers.net/2009/03 /the-results)
2. Ranked in top 10 most popular weblogs in the survey conducted by orkutheroes.com
3. Achieved Google page rank of 4 within six months of its inception
4. Invited & covered National Level business events for Economic Times-The power of ideas, Microsoft- Connect Bloggers Brief.
5. Reported more than 15,000 page views and 10,000 unique hits per month

It’s an year now that GeekOnNet started. It had been a very good learning experience for all the three of us. Ranjeet plans to work for an IT company in a few days and Deepak to continue with his theatre in Mumbai. I have joined SIBM,Pune for my Masters in Business Administration. I hope the distance doesn’t create a hindrance in continuing our website.

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MeraCareerGuide.com

It’s been long since I last updated GeekOnNet. I apologize to my avid readers for this delay. I was very busy with my final Masters Thesis. Finally am a post graduate (BTech. + MTech.) now in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay :) .

Ok, now back to the point. In the past two months there has been a backlog (pardon us for using the IIT jargon) of more than 15 Indian startups with us. The first in the list being meracareerguide.com.

It is a one stop destination for Education & Career related information, aims to address problems of students who are confused and have numerous questions about their particular field of interests. The website is designed to provide a platform to students from 15-24 age group, at the same time it will enable educational institutes to reach out to their target students.Using Internet as its platform, meracareerguide.com reaches out to students in every city and town of India. meracareerguide.com informs, connects and guides these students to a variety of educational programs. MeraCareerGuide.com provides the following set of services to users.

• Information about career that can be pursued after +2 and after graduation.
• Career Tests: scientifically designed assessments.
• Expert chat for career counseling.
• Forums for queries to be answered by community & Experts.
• Course planner that gives information about various courses and colleges across India.
• Interview queries.
• Resume preparation.
• Education related articles.

GeekOnNet team had detailed email interview with Surabhi Dewra (Founder) to get an insight of her entrepreneurial journey.

The Geeks: How did you get the idea to start meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We, ourselves, have been at the crossroads and so we understand the kind of guidance students require in their intermediate stage of education; though I happened to be lucky one to get to BITS-Pilani and then had constant access to great mentors.
During my college days, I took up activity of counseling in schools of Hyderabad and Bihar; and there realized students had many questions about their career and future prospects. Consequently, In 2007 founded MITR – a scholastic students' guide - in Hyderabad and later decided to have a pan India approach. As the web today has become the best medium, we decided to use the power of internet to solve many of educational issues and that’s how www.meracareerguide.com came into existence.

The Geeks: Whats your "Business Model" & "Revenue Model"?
Ans: The website is designed to provide a platform to students from age group 15-24 to use it for their educational queries; at the same time it enables educational institutes to reach out to their target students. So the revenue inflow is from educational institutes whereas the service is entirely free for students.

The Geeks: Who are your nearest competitors? How do you differentiate your service or product from that of others?
Ans: Studyplaces.com, I would say, is providing similar services but execution wise it’s totally different.
We provide a personalized approach. This approach helps students to easily understand how to use information they receive. Counseling and career requirements are very specific to each individual, which is ensured on www.meracareerguide.com through live chat feature where in students are allowed to have live interaction about their educational queries with our experts. We have given maximum attention to ensure that content is easily scannable and in chunk format making it is easily comprehensible and not overwhelming.

The Geeks: How many students or career advise seekers get benefited from meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We have students from various age groups who come to us for finding answers to their concerns regarding Why, How, When, Where and What about their career. In its two months of official launch, www.meracareerguide.com has 50,000 users hitting the portal and using the services.

The Geeks: What background skills, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Ans: Like I wrote earlier, I have experiences in counseling at schools of Hyderabad and Bihar. Those experiences have helped me have an insight into the students requirements. Also, my association with educational NGOs like Nachiketa Tapovan(Hyd) and Damini( Har.,Raj., Bihar,Jhrakhand & UP) has helped me understand the way an educational medium needs to be shaped. Where as, the usage of relevant technology to convert the idea into a website came from other founders of the site.

The Geeks: Where do you want to see meracareerguide.com 3 years down the line? Or whats your future plan?
Ans: We are planning to have network of 5000 schools and colleges and where in we can have career workshops. Apart from this, we would be launching a few career centric features on the portal which will help students in taking right decisions.

The Geeks: Advise for future entrepreneur ?
Ans: I have few lines from Rudyard Kipling’ poem ‘IF’, which I came across in my standard 8th while preparing for a poetry recitation competition and since then these lines have been my strength. I would like to quote a few of my favorite lines:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

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How to Choose a Good Domain Name?

In Ranjeet's 100 Blog Tips I Learnt in 2008, Part 1 his number 3 and 4 are buying your own domain name and also getting a domain name that will be the main subject of discussion. Ranjeet asked me over at Web Hosting Search to discuss why domain names are important and why you as a potential new blog creator or an experienced pro should care.
You blog, you Twitter, you Friendfeed, you Facebook, you do all those social media things to bring awareness to your blog. Have you thought about your blog name itself? Is it a good name? Is it a catchy name that people will remember?

There are some Do's and Dont's of having a domain name. For some of you still on the lookout for an available domain name for a new blog, this is THE post for you. Honestly, forget the social media aspect at this moment, if you have a bad domain name, you will have a hard life ahead in the virtual world.

DOs:
Get a name that means something. If your blog is about you and your experiences, get it in your name. If your blog is about a particular subject, get a matching name, like Geek on Net.
Get an easy to understand name. If a name is long and hard to remember or spell, chances are, people will have a hard time typing in your blog URL and telling others. Word of mouth in the real world is still invaluable; get something that will easily stick in a person's mind.
Have a domain name that is difficult to remember? That's okay, buy a more user-friendly name and redirect that to your current blog. I don't recommend to do this all the time but if you notice people have trouble with your site name, then considering getting another one.

DON'Ts:
Do not host your blog on subdomain like .WordPress.com (that's .com), .typepad.com, or anything else where you do not have a domain name of your own. This is especially true if you are brand. Serious websites deserve serious names. Go with ilovechocolate.wordpress.com as a chocolate seller, chances are people will not take you seriously. Neither will Google for that matter. Subdomained sites like this take more time to build up credibility in the search engines.
Do not spell your name in an incomprehensible way. Geekonnet.com already taken? Buy Geeekonnet.com. That extra “E” can cause you a lot trouble as geeek is not a real word. Unconventional spelling will require more elbow grease on your side to get the name out.
Do not pick a domain that is a play on an already known brand. Ilovelouisvuitton.com is not a valid domain name because you are infringing on copyright laws. If you are a blogger that writes about a celebrity or famous brand (like LV), choose your domain name wisely; you could end up with a lawsuit otherwise.

Take a step back and look at your domain name. You may be the most awesome Twitterer, but at the end of the day, a good domain is as important. As bloggers, we all want people to remember us and stop by our site. Make your site name tasty and easy and even more people will visit.

Author: Eva Vesper
Website: http://webhostingsearch.com

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Bing VS Google : Head-to-Head

Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out once. So I am back to keeping one of my promises; as I promised in my last post to come up with the " comparison of search results of Google & Bing".

Hats off to SEO specialist Paul Savage who has made this very basic web service, which lists all the results for your search queries on Google and Bing side by side, so you can compare which one produces the better results for the keywords you enter, on a single page. I played around with it , and this is what I felt:

The comparison:

Main Page Size: Both have almost equal page size, 14KB with 4 http request and 15KB with 1 http request for Google and Bing respectively. Page loading times are almost equal for both the search engines.

UI: I liked the concept of the front cover photo changing every day. When you float over it, you find the hidden "Easter eggs" that lead you on some interesting and unexpected links. So, full marks to Microsoft's Bing.

Web Search Results:
Web search results are almost the same for a simple search query. When I searched "geekonnet" the initial results on both search engines are almost the same.

Image Search: This is a place where bing needs a lot of improvement. When I did an image search on myself, google gave me results from linkedin, Twitter, Facebook ..etc. Bing didn't give me any relevant image search result. Well, bing's mouse over features are good. But the image search is really bad.

Video Search: Almost same, mainly from youtube and other video streaming sites.

Well, Bing reached at 2nd place in the search engine war, after google, ahead of yahoo search and ask.com. I predict that the market share of google will remain unchanged but bing will take away yahoo's and ask's market share. I am definitely not shifting to bing, from google; what about you? Here is a poll on the right side of this post. So, "Are you moving to BING?" "Yes","No" or " I don't care".

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Bing : A Google Killer???

Recently, I wrote about Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine. I also wrote about Cuil last year. Definitely they are not google killer. But they have killed themselves by the hype created before launching.

So now we have another new search engine to unveil, this time from Microsoft. But doesn’t Microsoft already have a search engine called Live Search? Yes they do, but they’ll be killing that off in the next few days.

Bing: which type of name is it? I asked the same question to one of my friend who works for Live Search. He replied “Dude I have no idea what does it mean and why they are shutting down live search”. Well, what's in a name? All we want a good search engine.

The most significant change is that Bing now organizes search results into categories. it’s a “decision engine” that will help consumer to make decisions about travel, health, and shopping. Microsoft also launched a new site, Discover Bing, that goes into all the details of how Bing works and the decision process behind the creation of it.

As we can see the snapshots given below, there are mainly 3 columns on its main page. Left most is “Explore”, basically categories like images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel , The middle one is for searched result and the last one is for “similar links”. I am not sure whether this last column is for sponsored link or not. It also has suggestions (not a new thing for today’s search engines). The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing while Google spent $25 million on all its advertising last year.

To know more about Bing watch this 2.47 minutes video.

Bing is going to be launched on 3rd June worldwide. I am eagerly waiting for that day. Currently I can’t say anything about its search results but I am highly impressed by it’s categorized search. This is something new for search engines or you can say an improvement to the search engines.

I never used Live Search. I don’t see myself giving up Google, especially given the default Firefox browser integration. But after seeing Bing’s features , definitely I would like to use it and also would like to compare it’s results with google’s results.

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